Harry may have ticked the box of being accepted by Chelsy’s protective brother but he faced another, more daunting challenge the following day. He had been invited to join the Davy family for their pre-Christmas holiday in Mozambique. The group were due to fly there from Durban and join Chelsy’s parents, Beverly and Charles, on the remote island of Bazaruto. This was to be Harry’s first encounter with Mr and Mrs Davy.
Harry would have met them earlier but for one inconvenient fact: Charles Davy was a wealthy businessman who lived near Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. The country was run by Robert Mugabe’s repressive government, which had overseen the removal of many white farms in recent years. Horrific stories had emerged from Zimbabwe as families, many of whom had farmed the land for generations, were forced out of their homes by violent gangs.
A few months earlier Harry had asked his father if it would be possible for him to go to Zimbabwe and visit the Davy ranch. But he had been told in no uncertain terms that this was out of the question. Even if Harry’s safety could have been protected, the political fall-out of a senior British Royal making a private visit to Zimbabwe would have been immense.
The advice was spot on. The following year when Prince Charles accidentally shook the hands of Mugabe at Pope John Paul’s funeral he found himself at the centre of a political storm.
But joining the Davys on their annual holiday in Mozambique seemed like the perfect solution for Harry and Chelsy. The island resort really is an undiscovered paradise. Its white sand beaches, palm trees and log cabins make it one of the most exclusive and secluded getaways on the planet. Here, Harry could take time to get to know the Davys while feasting on fresh fish and langoustines landed the same day by hotel staff.
The tiny resort had its own airstrip to fly wealthy guests in and out. The area was so remote it barely had any roads, just miles and miles of sandy beaches and untouched lagoons. Ironically, among the handful of those lucky enough to have discovered Bazaruto was the Zimbabwean president himself, who was a regular visitor. But fortunately for Harry, there was no chance of Mugabe’s visit clashing with his.
By now several newspapers had arrived in Umhlanga Rocks and were being sent to Mozambique as the Chelsy story gained momentum. We flew with other journalists from Durban to the nearest airport on the mainland. Bazaruto is fifteen miles off the coast of Mozambique, so the nearest airfield was a place called Vilanculos, a small fishing town with not much more than a shed for an airport.
We had accommodation booked on the island, but after looking at the resort website we decided there was no way we could stay there. The resort only had about a dozen beachside lodges and one communal bar area, dining room and outdoor swimming pool. The last thing Harry would want to see was a bunch of Fleet Street hacks tucking into cocktails in the only bar. So instead we headed for a small hotel on the mainland, which was several miles away from the prince but as close as we could realistically get.
The following day the journalists from the UK decided to rent a boat to go and look at Bazaruto and get a feel for the place for the inevitable story that would follow. Tasked with the job of travelling to the island on behalf of the group, I set off in a small fishing boat manned by two local guys who were happy to sacrifice a day’s catch to become a water taxi.
Looking back, there is no way I would have attempted the journey had I known just how far, and how perilous it was going to be. The resort was at the far end of the island and this meant three and a half hours in a tiny boat through shark-infested waters. If anything went wrong, the nearest hospital was a six-hour drive away, and the waters off the coast of Mozambique had no coastguard or emergency services.
After bumping up and down in the boat for what felt like days, we finally arrived in a secluded bay where the Royal party were staying. There was no doubt this was one of the most beautiful and remote places I had ever seen. The crystal clear blue sea, the white sand and sight of palm trees looked to me like paradise on earth.
Soaking wet and relieved to be finally in the shelter away from the choppy swell of the Indian Ocean, I could just make out a man walking down to the water’s edge. As we got within feet of the shore I could see who the man waiting for me was. It was Harry’s number one protection officer; a loyal and professional police officer who had been by Harry’s side since he was a small boy. We had met briefly back in Umhlanga Rocks after pictures had been taken of Harry and Chelsy eating lunch at Zack’s.
The officer – who I have agreed not to name – stood on the beach with his arms folded. I could only make out one or two huts in the bay, and his footsteps were the only ones on the entire beach.
After taking one look at my soaked clothes he started to smile. He could see how relieved I was to have made it to dry land and must have known what a dangerous journey I had made.
I immediately apologized for arriving on the island. It was so obvious that this remote location was clearly no place for us to try and get pictures of Harry.
The protection officer seemed grateful when I assured him this was going to be my one and only time on Bazaruto, and that I had come on behalf of the other journalists to get a look at the place for our stories, then I was off.
To my surprise he then asked me for a favour. He said: ‘Do you know a reporter from the News of the World called Sarah Arnold?’
Of course I did. She was a well-known and popular journalist on our sister paper. Only a few months earlier I’d met her on a job in Switzerland covering a story about Victoria Beckham.
‘Why do you ask?’ I replied.
‘Because she is here on the island with a photographer and they are pretending to be on honeymoon. We know who she is because we’ve seen her passport. Harry is extremely angry about it and if she doesn’t leave he will have no choice but to fly home.’
The officer asked me if I could have a gentle word in her ear to suggest she leave the island and head back to the mainland with me.
Even though the News of the World and The Sun were written in the same building, in adjacent newsrooms, we were still fierce rivals. Also, I thought, if she and the photographer stayed on the island, Harry and Chelsy would simply head home.
Most importantly, the kind-hearted policeman offered to have a word with the hotel manager to see if I could hitch a ride on his next flight back to Vilanculos, meaning I didn’t have to set foot on that clapped-out old boat again.
I agreed to go and speak to Sarah and pass on the message. She was sitting on the terrace near the hotel pool. The photographer was by her side, although neither of them had notepads or cameras. There were only a small handful of other holidaymakers in the area, but I suggested to Sarah that we head off for a quiet chat along the beach.
To my astonishment the pair of them stayed in character. They said they were on honeymoon and demanded I leave them alone. They even threatened to call security if I did not do as they demanded.
I said: ‘Have you two been drinking the seawater? I’ve been asked to point out that they know you are from the News of the World and if you don’t leave then Harry will fly home.’
Despite my best efforts, there was nothing I could do to persuade them. I walked back to find the protection officer, who had been watching from a distance. To my surprise he was standing there with someone else. It seemed Prince Harry had decided to come over to see if I had succeeded.
‘Well,’ I said. ‘You are right about who they are but I have a bit of a problem.’
Harry and his protection officer looked at me, confused.
I explained: ‘They won’t get out of character. They are adamant they are just a normal honeymoon couple. In fact, they said if I didn’t stop pestering them they would call security.’
Harry and the officer burst out laughing before the officer replied: ‘Thanks for trying.’ We all shook hands and I wished Harry a good holiday, repeating my promise that I was heading back to the mainland, where I would stay.
It was only a few days later, when my office had finally given up on the waitin
g game and called us off the job, that I eventually saw the ‘honeymooners’. They were waiting for a flight back to South Africa. It was an awkward moment, to say the least, but I later found out they had been thrown off the island shortly after I had gone.
It was a very surreal way of meeting a prince, but it taught me a valuable lesson. Harry doesn’t like the press, but if you are prepared to compromise and show willing, he can see the funny side of what we do.
CHAPTER 4
KLOSTERS
‘I’ll be there, with a glass of brandy, smoking a big fat cigar with my dad,’ said a bleary-eyed Harry.
It was the early hours of 31 March 2005 and I was in a Swiss nightclub in the company of Prince William and his high-spirited younger brother, Harry. In just a few hours’ time we were all due on a hillside in the posh resort of Klosters for the official ski photocall with Prince Charles. It was the first time I had spoken to Harry since The Sun broke the story of him wearing the Nazi outfit to a fancy dress party.
I must confess I was very worried about what he would say to me. My name was on the story and since then I had been asked to talk about the partying prince on television. The story broke in January 2005 and since then the young prince had been under fire from all over the world. Inevitably Harry was criticized for his judgement, and the impact his seemingly wayward behaviour was having on ‘the Firm’, and people were questioning whether he was spiralling out of control.
One thing that has always surprised me about William and Harry is the interest they take in what is written about them. They are well aware that because of their accident of birth they will be the focus of media attention from before they were born, throughout their lives and after they are dead.
Many celebrities, politicians and famous people can only cope with negative press by pretending it is not there. As a general rule, they choose to avoid reading the bulk of the negative comments in a bid to keep their sanity or at the very least to prevent their large egos from taking a battering. Like actors refusing to read negative reviews of their work, they tend to cherry pick the best bits of media coverage as a way of coping with life under the spotlight.
In these circumstances it would be reasonable to assume the young princes simply refuse to pick up a newspaper for fear of seeing mistruths or criticism of them splashed across the pages. At the very least they could be forgiven for leaving their army of media advisers to ‘deal’ with the bad stuff and allow them to get on with their lives.
Nothing could be further from the truth. At times both the boys have demonstrated to me that they appear to read every word that is written about them. Certainly as far as the British tabloid papers are concerned, William and Harry seem to have an intense interest in what is said about them.
In the wake of the Nazi storm I had already been warned about this by the Prince of Wales’s media team at Clarence House. ‘You realize they (William and Harry) take a very keen interest in what people write about them,’ warned one of Prince Charles’s senior press advisers less than a week after the Harry the Nazi front page.
They went on to explain how both the boys kept in regular contact with the press office, asking for cuttings to be read to them and often demanding action if they felt stories were inaccurate or unfair. Even then Clarence House was well known for using the Press Complaints Commission and an aggressive legal firm to instantly seek some kind of redress if that was what the Royals demanded.
Some might think this egotistical, even vain, but that is far from fair. As far as the young princes are concerned, they have a duty to protect their reputations from inaccurate statements made about them. In their eyes this is nothing more than the ‘rules of engagement’ with the media. If criticism is fair, if the stories are accurate, then they are both big enough to take it on the chin. And they often do. But there has to be a line in the sand, a point beyond which they feel they can’t just sit back and not say anything.
Behind the scenes there is a constant conversation going on between the Royal PR advisers and those members of the media who write stories about them. Both Harry and William are sensitive. They really do care about how they come across and will react with fury if this line has been crossed.
When the Nazi uniform story broke, Harry faced a very difficult few weeks. He knew he had made a mistake and he knew it would take a very long time to repair the damage. But, even as a relatively immature 20-year-old, he was also well aware that the story was accurate and he had no choice but to take the storm of criticism, even the parts which were unfair, on the chin. He lay low for six weeks, and the controversy had died down by the time he was due to join his brother on Prince Charles’s annual ski trip to Klosters.
This was a regular date in the calendar for the family, a time to enjoy a favourite pastime with their father, a chance to hook up with friends and to hit the slopes at high speed. But over the years a convention had grown in a bid to ensure their ski holiday antics would remain largely unreported. The select group of Royal reporters and photographers would be invited to Klosters for an official photocall with the princes.
This idea began way back in the days when the princes were very young and Charles and Diana were desperate to try and give them as normal a ski holiday as possible. In return for being allowed to take pictures and throw a limited number of questions at the Royals, the media agreed to leave them alone once the photocall had taken place.
By and large over the years this unofficial arrangement had worked. It was not ideal for the Royals, who would much rather have enjoyed a holiday far away from any media attention. Nor was it ideal for the journalists, many of whom were uncomfortable with agreeing to take part in what was really nothing more than a staged event.
But in March 2005 there was particular interest in the annual photo opportunity. Yes, it was to be one of the first few times Harry would pose for the cameras following his recent embarrassment. But there were two bigger reasons the pressmen and women would flock to the exclusive Swiss resort that year.
Prince Charles was just weeks away from marrying Camilla Parker Bowles. The ‘third person’ in the future king’s marriage to Diana was finally going to cement her place within the Royal family. She didn’t join them on the trip, and this was going to be the last time William and Harry would spend a holiday away together without the woman famously dubbed a ‘Rottweiler’ by their late mother.
And the other reason why newspapers and television stations were more than happy to fork out a small fortune for their staff to stay in one of the world’s most expensive ski resorts was to do with Prince William. In their wisdom, William and Charles had agreed to let Kate Middleton join them on the slopes that year. The couple were in their final few months at St Andrews University and their long-term romance had become the worst kept secret in Fleet Street. While the press was voluntarily banned from bothering William and Kate at university, the fact she was out in Klosters keeping her lover company was always going to serve up a mouth-watering opportunity for them.
The combination of a long-awaited Royal wedding and the prospect of catching a rare glimpse of William and Kate together was enough to ensure the small town was going to be packed with photographers. Fortunately for Harry, his recent problems were far from the minds of the journalists who arrived in Klosters in a fleet of hire cars after the two-hour drive from Zurich.
As is the case with all official photocalls, the event was to be carefully controlled by Clarence House. Invited media were told to gather for a briefing in a hotel conference room they had rented for the occasion.
Here, the familiar faces of the ‘Royal press pack’ would gather to discuss the plan for the following day. The exact location had been chosen but was being kept secret for security reasons. Only this handful of seasoned Royal watchers, their photographers, cameramen and producers would be told the details of what was planned for the morning.
It was agreed that William, Harry and their father would walk to an agreed point and sit together on a wooden wall by a Swi
ss farm building. The backdrop had been carefully chosen to show the mountains behind and the snow-kissed resort of Klosters in all its glory. To maximize the chances of the event going smoothly the media would be kept well back behind a rope. By creating a ‘press pen’ away from the Royals it was hoped that pushing and shoving would be replaced by careful and orderly behaviour from the forty or so journalists who were allowed to take part.
The princes would only answer a limited number of questions and it was decided in advance who was going to be lucky enough to quiz all three the following day. It is convention when reporting on the Royals that you do not shout out questions from the pack. The British media are well accustomed to this arrangement, and the palace team orchestrating the event knew it would have been a bad career move for any of us to try and push the boundaries of what had been agreed.
After the briefing the reporters headed off for a meal to discuss the photocall and speculate as to what we might get. By Alpine standards Klosters is a very small resort. There are just a handful of restaurants and bars and a single nightclub which is barely the size of someone’s front room. The plan was to have a nice meal, then head off to our small hotels for an early night.
While most of the pack did just that, I decided to pop into a hotel where I knew many of Harry and William’s friends liked to hang out. The downstairs bar was packed full of well-spoken English people. The fact that Prince Charles had made Klosters his annual choice of resorts had clearly not been wasted on the plane-loads of wealthy British families who, by complete coincidence, also decided to make the annual pilgrimage to the town.
The bar was wild, with the over-stretched staff serving up expensive champagne by the ice bucket-load. This was how the other half lived. The offspring of some of the country’s wealthiest families tucked into bottles of Bollinger and goldfish bowls of £90-a-time cocktails all shamelessly put down on Daddy’s tab. It seemed obvious that it was not just the press who flocked to Klosters because the Royals were in town. This was the place to be seen and this was the week to be seen there.
Prince Harry Page 5
